Strength & Conditioning

Good Reads for the Week

As if you weren’t already busy enough, here are 45 good reads for the week!

1. For those of you who missed my interview with Cedric Unholz, this is my best yet (I know I say that every time but I really mean that). Great questions from Cedric. Some controversial topics in here…

2. In this article Bryan Chung discusses a study comparing the effects of rest periods on hypertrophy. Rest periods had no effect on hypertrophy!

20. In this blog Carl Valle acknowledges that Arizona trainers are bigger, better, and badder than our East Coast counterparts and the “Four Phoenix Phantoms” could probably whoop over a dozen East Coast trainers without half trying. It’s sure great to be recognized. I guess it’s just something in the water out here. Maybe I embellished slightly…

21. In this blog Kevin Neeld discusses injury prevention as it relates to training stress and competition stress.

22. In this blog Carson Boddicker discusses the length of stability holds.

23. In this blog JCD discusses hypertrophy training and includes links to various hypertrophy-related systems.

24. In this blog Mark Young provides another great discussion about science.

25. This is an awesome article on SB Coaches College that lists programming questions that every good strength coach should consider (the list is from the late Verkhoshansky).

26. This is an AWESOME blog by Mike Robertson on sleeping. This is a must-read. He pretty much summed up my thoughts on sleeping. It’s not your typical boring sleep article; there’s some good stuff in there. Read it!

27. This is a Men’s Health article that shows a really cool circuit created by Joe Dowdell. I really like the circuits Joe creates and I appreciate that Adam Bornstein travels all around the country visiting good gyms and filming videos. Check it out it’s good stuff!

30 Responses

This brings up a good point. Many powerlifters find that they can use more weight when they round their upper backs. As long as they control the rounding in their low back then it’s okay to round the upper back. It may not look pretty, but guys like Matt are interested in using as much weight as possible. I’m sure that Matt could knock the weight back to 375 and bang out pretty reps. But his anthropometry is better suited for ub rounding. I think that this is hard for people who have good “levers” and are “natural deadlifters” to comprehend. If Matt were a competitive athlete, he’d probably avoid the deadlift and stick to power cleans just out of safety pre-cautions.

Shit I just realized that I answered this question off my blog dashboard without looking at which post it came from. I assumed it came from the interview with Matt Perryman which had a video of him deadlifting. Duh!!!

Poly, good thoughts. I work with my clients in teaching them hip hyperextension but I’ve found that it’s much easier with unilateral exercises (single leg hip thrust and pendulum donkey kick) as there is only a slight ROM past neutral in bilateral (textbooks say 10 degrees with bent legs and 20 degrees with straight legs) but under heavy load it’s pretty slight. At any rate, after you do these exercises for a substantial period you learn the right “feel.” My clients (and me) always know if they go too heavy as they don’t use as much ROM and don’t feel the glutes working to their full effect.

The ONLY person in the world that knows whether he’s squeezing his ass is Ben Rice. You just cannot tell from the video. Not you and not me. Yes, his hip didn’t goto lock out, but I’m sitting here on my chair, with a 90 degree bend at my hips and I can still squeeze my ass. Nice and hard.

So if I can do it in this position, then Ben (who is almost at lockout) with 605 freaking pounds, is most probably doing it as well. And that will certainly transition over to helping him deadlift godly amounts of weight. Period.

Fitjerk, I’m going to have to side with Poly on this one. What I love about the deadlift is that there’s a natural start and end point (bar on ground, stand up with it). As you know, with the squat many people think they go to parallel when in fact they don’t. I’ve found that gym-goer self-perception is terrible when it comes to squat-depth. Similarly, when people hip thrust, they often “think” they’re coming up high enough when they’re not. Now, I’d be the first to congratulate Ben Rice as he is one strong son of a bitch! However, I’d tell him to his face (which is my right as the inventor of the exercise) to lighten the load a bit and use a little more ROM up top. This is the range where the gluteus maximus can contract the hardest (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11767248) and it builds good habits. As you know, in efforts to continue to rise in poundage, if you allow less then full ROM and “wiggle room” it keeps shortening over time until eventually the ROM is greatly diminished. You see this in the gym when guys do squats, dips, military press, etc. So I always advise full ROM and going to lockout with healthy individuals. This is why I like box squats (to ensure depth) and I make people touch the bar to their chest when they bench, incline, bent over row, etc. In cases of sprinting transfer, the neutral hip position is associated with ground contact where hip torque and gluteus maximus activation is highest. It may seem like I’m being nit-picky but that’s often what separates the best trainers from average ones. I believe that you’re right in that he is squeezing his ass and using a lot of glute, and that the way he does it would still transfer to his deadlift. However, I’d still prefer slightly more ROM for reasons mentioned above. Thoughts?

(joke) If I were Mark Rippetoe, I would just hold onto the ass and see if it tightens. (/joke)Actually maybe it’s not a joke since, Bret says he feels buttocks to see what is going on. Yeah, he might be squeezing, but I really find the squeese at the end is different than the squeezze halfway.

(technical point) here’s what Mr. Rice comments at his youtube video about the exercise:

” I added these back in specifically to address my lockout that was an issue in my last meet… I mean seriously, 723 was RIGHT there, the bar didn’t﻿ even need to move!﻿ I just couldn’t push my hips through… and so now these are back to remedy the problem.”

In this video he never hit neutral. If his problem with the deadlift is hitting neutral, he ought to make sure he does it within the exercise. He might need the hyper more than anyone. [I mean if a general fitness person does the exercise halfway, well, maybe no big deal…some kind of muscles are getting worked and they need them all over anyhow.] But Mr. Rice has a very technical need to get his hips to neutral to make 723. The bar was there! He just needed to push his hips through. If this is the assistance exercise to get the hips through…well…get em through!

P.s. And I shouldn’t have to defend myself for “hating” on the guy. I don’t hate on people with low strength or high strength. this stuff is hard enough. I just respect the time being put in. He’s my weightlifting brotha, not my enemy. So are you, man.

“This is the range where the gluteus maximus can contract the hardest…”

No arguments there Bret, and you’re also bang on with the depth perception of the squat. While I’m no personal fan of the box squat, I do see the value in it as far as reaching the desired depth is concerned. There’s been plenty of times where I’d squat heavy as hell… then my training partner would be like “dude, you didn’t go parallel”, and im like REALLY? God damn it.

Back to Ben. It obviously would be GOOD to see him hip thrust all the way to the top but at that weight a slight dip is, IMO, acceptable. And you know what, after a few weeks I’m pretty sure he reached full hip lockout assuming he kept using 605. My intention was not to get too technical or debate that it’s not beneficial to lock out, but at Poly’s un-needed commentary on a feat that is pretty damn challenging.

If Ben was pushing 135 and his form sucked… sure, criticize. But at 605 it’s like gimme a break man, it’s obviously some heavy ass shit. Anyone with half a brain and a minor amount of weight training experience knows the inverse relationship between technique and this thing called weight. And seeing a guy push 605 on this exercise, it should be obvious that this weight factor would affect the technique a bit… and that’s fine in my books. (check my recent blog post on this, its got a pretty graph and everything)

On top of this, Ben seems like a smart guy who knows what the fuck he’s doing. Who isn’t to say that he didn’t do another set with 500 after or 400? Know what I mean?

Anywhoo, this has gotten wordy so I’ll stop there as I believe I’ve made my point.

On a different note, this was a kick ass list. Spent like an hour just going through shit on here and I’m still only half way. I know JC was bragging about how he got on here haha. Good stuff dude. I’ll see you around Fitmarker 😉

Fitjerk – If he stuck with 605 and worked on completing the range over time then I’m completely fine with that. What I fear as that two months from now he’ll be using 655 and using even less ROM. But obviously this cat is a smart dude so I’m sure he’ll figure it out. One of my strengths as a trainer is that I’m not “enamored” by feats of strength and still try to stick to the rules. This does not mean that I think a 1RM should look the same as a 5RM. I fully realize that form breaks down when going heavy. If your form never breaks down whatsoever then you aren’t training heavy enough (at least by powerlifting standards…the same argument may not hold true when training athletes for sport preparation). But I believe that we’re both on the same page here. Tell JC to get on twitter or facebook and to post his articles as newsfeeds. That’s how I read all my stuff. I landed on his site after a friend Roger Law posted a link on Facebook.

True, I think enamored is a big word, and in my mind it showcases a dropped jaw in “awe”. That’s not what I was getting at… It was just merely more of a “that’s impressive, respect”. Still, good point, he did go heavier.

I believe JC is on Twitter, but I’m not sure how often he uses it. He’s a Twitter slacker.

But I’ll let him know. Btw I’m following you as of right now, looking forward to seeing what you’ve got to share. Hit me up sometime, @FitJerk

I think we’re on the same page…I can always appreciate brute strength. I remember Jim Wendler saying something about guys who are strong with crappy technique are even more impressive because they are actually stronger than the guy who lifts the same weight but has better technique. But in the case of a hip thrust; I’m worried a little about his form. If you round your low back on deadilfts you will eventually get injured. Similarly, if you hyperextend your low back on hip thrusts you will eventually get injured. Sure he’s probably using his glutes a ton; but if he just backed off in weight he’d be able to control the lumbar spine and not risk injury. See how much more “flow” I have…my upper back is lower on the bench creating a longer lever (making it harder), my low back doesn’t arch (freeze the top of his lift and my lift), I raise my hips higher, and I control the weight better. Now, Ben is much stronger than me and I’m very impressed but if I were his trainer I’d have him back off in weight so he doesn’t injure the posterior elements of his lumbar spine. Hindsight is always 20/20.

I wanted to ask you a couple of questions regarding your experience on the hip thrust.

Is it an exercise where you would benefit more on using real heavy weights for low reps, or moderate weight for higher reps.

Also, would you consider it an exercise you could use for max effort or dynamic effort or is it better as an assistance exercise to squats &/or deadlift. If it is the latter, which is it better for squat or deadlift, considering it hits the quads, hamstings, hips and glutes well (per your emg article).

Another thing I’ve been struggling to understanding is what you meant in your Inside the Muscles Leg article by half squat and quarter squat. Is the half squat the same as parallel squat?

Joe, I like going really heavy for sets of 3-5 reps. I do it after squats and deads but I have a different way of looking at it. Squats are my best quad exercise, deads are my best hamstring exercise, and hip thrusts are my best glute exercise. I need all three for an optimal physique. In addition, the three lifts are synergistic with one another. 1 + 1 + 1 = 5 It’s definitely better for the deadlift than the squat, and more specifically for the deadlift lockout. No, the half squat wasn’t quite to parallel. Probably six inches higher than parallel. More than a quarter squat but less than a parallel squat. Great questions!!!

Great questions! Yes, I keep my heels on the floor. Some times you’ll see people’s feet shift during the first rep as they’re trying to get stable and reposition, which isn’t that big of a deal. I like a right angle at the knee joint at the top of the movement. People usually figure out the proper heel distance to allow for this naturally. As for shoulders on the bench, there’s a “sweet spot” that feels comfortable. Some will try to make the exercise easier by positioning their backs low on the bench to reduce the lever arm and make the exercise easier. I don’t allow for this and tell them to place their backs against the bench in the same place as the barbell rests against the bench when they squat.